Angry Birds Epic strategy guide: Rake in the resources, earn your stars, and most importantly, slay some piggies with these top tips

Angry Birds Epic has been enjoying a soft launch in Canada and we've played enough of it at this point to have some key tips to get through the first few hoops of this freemium combat RPG. The game pits your custom-built team of birds from the well-known Rovio franchise against the nefarious pigs in a classic turn-based fantasy showdown. Between stages, players craft armor, weapons, and potions for their motley crew of birds. A bewildering array of special abilities both for your party and enemies make this game tactically challenging, especially as you progress to later stages. Follow these tips and you should be well on your way in Angry Birds Epic.

1. Find the prizes

Though the core gameplay of Angry Birds Epic is a strategic turn-based combat game, there's a dash of casual gaming thrown in here too. Be sure to hop into the game regularly in order to harvest resources from the nodes you unlock throughout your progress. On that note, you'll also want to do the mission with the golden pig every day, first thing, in order to keep collecting the all-important gold pieces.

2. Save up for the Golden Anvil

Don't blow your gold pieces on silly stuff like revives, gambling for loot, or rerolling crafts when there are permanent upgrades to save up for. Between the Golden Anvil, the Golden Cauldron, and the Golden Chili, it's hard to pick which to go for first. The Golden Anvil wins out because quality gear will provide the most consistent, ongoing bonus through improved crafted gear, as opposed to the cauldron which simply provides more consumables which you shouldn't be heavily relying on, or the chili which lets you start off a mission with a bang, but nothing else after that. Limited time special offers will pop up once in awhile that cuts the gold cost in half, so it's generally wise to wait for those before biting the bullet. Ultimately it's up to your personal play style, but the anvil is our pick.

3. When you hit a stone wall, backtrack

Odds are you haven't three-starred every mission you've progressed. If the most recent mission is giving you an especially hard time, go back and do some older missions. Most will still have some challenge to them, and you'll earn rewards one way or the other. Keep an eye out for treasure chests on the map, and explore nearby stages to win them. If a chest is available, it will show above the prize wheel when you tap through. You can also target stages you haven't managed to get 3 stars on just yet.

4. Know the enemy

It's absolutely vital to understand what you're up against when deciding what order to attack in. Some enemies will have defenses that can totally bypass certain types of attacks, while others will present a much larger threat once you know what they're capable of. Just long press on any friendly or enemy to get more details on what they do. Studying enemy abilities may also help you reorganize your party on particularly tough levels. By the same token, assess all of the options afforded to your birds by their gear. Different weapons and armor (particularly hats, which change class) can significantly change how they're played.

5. Bring a healer

Though some of the easier levels you can muscle through with sheer brute force by using high-damage birds like the red bird, black bird, and blue birds, they simply won't last in multi-wave levels, even if you quaff a bunch of potions. Bring the white bird along to regularly heal your main damage dealers. I'll almost exclusively use my pepper once it's charged up on the white bird to heal the whole party in those longer stages.

Your best tips, hints, and cheats for Angry Birds Epic?

Those should help you on your quest to recover your precious egg supply in Angry Birds Epic, but they're just scratching the surface. Let us know how you've managed to get through Angry Birds Epic with your tips and tricks below! If you happen to be in one of the soft launch areas, here's where you can start downloading.